From Linda Lee Greene Author/Artist
Nobody
can ever say of me that I am a “globetrotter,” although I would like to be a
habitual gadabout. In my younger days, before health issues took over and ever
since then have dictated my whereabouts, I did a little international
traveling. My last trip across the pond was an employer-sponsored, long-weekend
in England. Take my advice and never go to England on a three-day pass, because
the time will zoom by and you’ll be left with little more than a blur in your
memory bank. Nowadays, unless I travel by way of a story in a book or an
article in a magazine or trek along with Rick Steves on public television, it
isn’t likely that I will ever again get to Europe or any place beyond the
borders of the USA. “Maybe in my next life?!” I lament in my weaker moments—when
my enthusiasm for my Elizabeth-Barrett-Browning-existence flags.
In the meantime, you can bet that I keep
a “Travel Bucket List” for my reincarnated life. Deep down I know the whole
idea of a newly-embodied self is a bunch of hooey, but didn’t Dorothy make it
to Oz on the wings of a tornado and Alice to Wonderland down a dark and creepy rabbit
hole? A similar kind of out-of-body episode might be my only pathway to the
trip of my dreams—to a week at a cooking school in Tuscany and another week
hanging out at the Bay of Naples—at least two to three weeks to take in the
history, art, and culture of Rome, Florence, Venice, and Milan, and then onto
several days of hiking the Cinque Terre, chasing romance at the feet of Romeo
and Juliet in Verona, and on and on? I figure I, or whomever I will be in that re-embodied
entity, will have to carve out about three months for such an itinerary.
“Dreams are made to sleep on,”
someone must have said at one time or another, and the specific night around
which this story centers, I crawled into bed and in no time my eyeballs rolled
up into my head and my eyelids closed down on my fondest dream. In an instant I
was transported to Northern Italy, at a raucous celebration comprised of
thousands of townspeople dressed up in garb that must have dated back to the 12th
or 13th centuries—men in knee-length or long tunics, some sporting
chain mail and full-fledged suits of armor, the women in long tunics or gowns
and linen veils draping their heads. I was soon to experience that the pointed-toed
shoes that both sexes wore were lethal weapons. A man standing next to me
explained that the festival was called the “Carnival of Ivrea,” known as the
“Battle of the Oranges” to English speakers and the biggest food fight in Italy
and surrounding countries.
My new friend went on to say, “The three-day
festival is a re-enactment of either a 12th or a 13th
century event—nobody seems to know for sure—in which a marquis or duke or person
of a similar ilk, exercised his right of privilege and forced himself on a
miller’s daughter on the eve of her wedding. The whole affair backfired on the
tyrant when the young maiden got her hands on what had to have been a really
sharp knife or some other chopping utensil and cut off his head. The legend
holds that the townspeople then stormed the palace where the maiden was held
captive and burned it to the ground. It signaled the end of such oppressive
acts on the part of the ruling class and is thought of as a revolutionary turn
for the common people.
“The re-enactment comprises thousands of
townspeople divided into nine combat teams of aranceri on foot that throw the oranges. The oranges represent old
weapons and stones, and as you can see, they are thrown at aranceri in carts that represent the tyrant’s ranks.”
While I couldn’t imagine landing a
position on one of the teams, it seemed to me that an alert and a nimble
bystander could swipe at least one loose orange and get in a lick. “You wouldn’t
think so many oranges could be had here in the cool shadow of the Italian Alps,”
I said to the stranger.
“Crateloads of them are shipped in from
Sicily. It’s the leftovers from southern Italy’s winter crop. By the way, my
name’s Whitey Ford,” and he held out a big and beefy hand. Mine was lost in the
curl of its elongated fingers and cavernous palm.
“Whitey Ford?! Not the Whitey Ford, the greatest pitcher in the history of the New
York Yankees?” I gasped.
“One and the same,” Whitey replied as he
released my hand.
At that very second, an orange sailed
through the air, levelled precisely at Whitey’s head. He stepped to the right,
reached up that iconic left arm, and just as the orange was about to drop into
his palm, I thrust my right hand up and grabbed it—I owned that orange! I had actually
gotten one over on the legendary Whitey Ford. As fast as lightning, I pitched it
like Whitey landing a strikeout across home plate. A missile nosed in on its
target, my orange connected and splattered in an orange slurry on a draped head
onboard one of the tyrant’s carts.
And wouldn’t you know it, I woke the
next morning to a juicy navel orange at rest on the nightstand next to my bed. Had
I carried it to my bedroom the night before intending to eat it, but then
forgot it in my urgent need for sleep? Was it like the time I absentmindedly brushed
my teeth with antibiotic cream, or when I said my former lover’s name instead
of my husband’s at the exchange of our wedding vows? Or had the fairies really visited
me while I slept and gifted me with the most perfect specimen of an orange? Such
are the delightfully curious possibilities of a dreamer’s life.
Rather than peeling it and eating it in
the same old way, I figured this special orange demanded special treatment. I
padded to the kitchen, laid it on a cutting board and sliced the orange in half
with a serrated knife. I then ran the knife around the inside perimeter of each
half to separate the pulp from the peel and then each section from the
membrane, like I always do to halves of a grapefruit. Next I dribbled 4 to 5 drops of vanilla
extract and 1 teaspoon of honey onto each half and then topped them with a
generous sprinkle of cinnamon. I arranged the orange halves onto a cookie sheet
sheathed in aluminum foil and placed them below the broiler of the oven for 3 –
5 minutes. Piping hot out of the oven, I had a hard time deciding on whether to
top them with whipped cream, ice cream, or fruit. Fruit it was, and I topped
the orange halves with a couple cubes of canned peaches.
I could only eat half of my magical
orange. I put the other half in a storage container and placed it in the fridge.
It was my breakfast the following morning, reheated in the microwave at 30
second intervals until it was just right.©
***
#Italy,
#RickSteves, #TravelBites, #PBS, #ItalianAlps, #CarnivalOfIvrea,
#BattleOfTheOranges, #WhiteyFord, #Baseball, #NewYorkYankees, #OvenBakedOranges,
#GardenOfTheSpiritsOfThePots, #LindaLeeGreene
***
Multi-award-winning
artist and author Linda Lee Greene’s GARDEN OF THE SPIRITS OF THE POTS: A
Spiritual Odyssey, is a novella in which ex-pat American Nicholas Plato
relocates to Sydney, Australia to escape the mental torture of devastating
losses back home. Strange encounters in Australia’s outback with an Indigenous
potter reveal to Nicholas unexpected blessings and a new way of living. The
novella is available in eBook and/or paperback. Just click the following link
and it will take you straight to the page on Amazon on which you can purchase
the book.
https://www.amazon.com/GARDEN-SPIRITS-POTS-SPIRITUAL-ODYSSEY-ebook/dp/B09JM7YL6F/
